


Hunger

by Wagnetic



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Loneliness, M/M, Pining, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 08:11:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/937642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wagnetic/pseuds/Wagnetic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the Eagle Fanmedia Challenge 2013. Inspired by the picture of the empty bowl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunger

Esca knows what it is to be hungry. He knows it from the occasional poor harvest from the time before, from the denial that served as punishment for defiance in his years as a slave. He knows the pain of it as he knows the pain of being beaten. It’s a thing that can be borne, though it is never easy.

 

Marcus has lived off meager rations, but he’s never starved. Out here in the wilds of Caledonia he gets his first experience of it, and it throws him in a way that even his hardest days as a soldier had not. For long stretches of the journey nothing passes his lips but water, and the water is bitterly cold and endless. Marcus wonders if he will ever again be able to differentiate between the sensations of cold and wet and empty.

* * *

Esca feels the first pangs of it when he tends to Marcus after the surgeon has come to reopen his wound. He sees how his master tries to be strong even as his consciousness fades under the knife. He hears the confused murmurs and the aching, soft sounds of fevered dreams. He sees the pain stark across Marcus’s face, which is open to him completely. But what breaks him in the end is the way Marcus reaches for him. Esca knows he would never do it in full consciousness, but while Marcus is hazy and addled from the surgeon’s opiate draughts, he seeks for Esca with all the strength he has. When Esca lifts his head so that he can drink, Marcus leans into Esca’s hands, and when Esca tries to settle him against the pillow again, Marcus’s hand searches for his.

Through the years, Esca thought that he had learned to shut it out. He doesn’t think of his brothers’ arms slung over his shoulders, the clasp of his father’s hand. He doesn’t think of his mother’s embrace. But now he thinks of Marcus’s head in his hands and he thinks of Marcus reaching for him. This is a hunger to which he is unaccustomed, and it is felt all the more sharply because of it. Esca sits by Marcus’s side and thinks how this will all end once Marcus is well again. Esca finds himself wishing his master would never heal, but not for the reasons he ought to wish it.

 

Marcus has lived with it for as long as he can remember. He had been a serious boy, unable to engage in the fanciful games the other children played, only ever watching from a distance. He was a good boy and of course his mother was fond of him, but in her own vague, distracted way. His father was the one who really noticed him, but he was gone much of the time. Marcus waited as patiently as he was able, but he felt it sharply nonetheless. As a youth, the burden of his father’s reputation weighed heavily on him. The name of Aquilla kept him in isolation, awaiting the day when he would finally serve with the legions and win back his family’s glory. By the time Marcus was a man, he didn’t know how to be anything but distant: touch was a strange and foreign thing. He understood that it was a thing others did, but also that it was not for him. He was never fated for such things.

Still, the moment he saw Esca, just an unnamed, unwashed slave in the arena, he wanted to be near him. He wanted to go down to the sand and hold onto him, though of course this was absurd in every conceivable way. Marcus watched helplessly as the man threw down his sword and buckler, refusing to fight. Marcus saw that he was bravery made flesh, so fiercely defiant even as his chest rose and fell rapidly with the stuttering breath of fear. The muscles of the slave’s hand twitched once, as though straining against his will to signal for mercy, but then they stilled and Marcus’s breath caught in his throat. The man was looking straight at him, or so it seemed to Marcus, and suddenly it was like seeing the chariot crashing towards him again: his body screaming at him to do something and his mind gone numb and still with dread. Just like the moment that the wood had shattered, he felt the pain of it driving into his leg, except this time it wasn’t quite so sharp. This time, he had his hand braced on his uncle’s shoulder to keep him standing upright. When the chariot had landed on him, the world had gone dark and silent, but this time he could hear his own voice above the clamor of the crowd, crying out for Esca’s life.

* * *

Everything is worse now, with Marcus utterly at his mercy again. Marcus looks to him for some kind of explanation or for guidance, and Esca has to force a sneer to his lips when he says that now Marcus is his slave. Esca has to watch as Marcus’s leg gives out and the ropes that bind him to the horse drag him across uneven ground. He presents Marcus for inspection and smiles as they taunt him. He sees Marcus’s eyes searching his for some indication that this is all an act. He can tell that Marcus’s reality is beginning to slip away and Esca wants to grasp his hand and remind him of the days when Esca nursed him through his illness. He wishes he could assure him that none of this is real, that it’s all a ruse to keep them both alive. Instead, he strikes Marcus and forces him to his knees. He grabs Marcus’s hair and pulls it until he bares his neck in offering to the Seal prince who he has so offended. It’s a bluff, but Marcus’s eyes aren’t searching any longer. Now he’s convinced that this is what’s real. Now he’s sure that Esca is his enemy.

When Esca wakes him and offers him a sword, the sight of Marcus’s exhausted smile makes his hands hurt. “I thought I’d lost you,” Marcus whispers, and Esca aches to clench his fingers in Marcus’s tunic and show him exactly how wrong he was. He wants to make sure Marcus never doubts that Esca is with him and will always be with him. There’s no time for that now, though, so instead he helps Marcus up and tells him the plan. If it all goes well, there will be time for everything else later. If it goes poorly, at least Marcus will know that Esca has always been loyal.

 

Marcus stumbles over the slick rocks, falls, goes under again and again. This is it, then. He isn’t going to make it through this, not with the cold surrounding him and his body burning from the inside, not with the Seal people in pursuit and gaining ground so fast. Esca drags him from the river and onto a bank, and Marcus knows what has to happen now. He wants to ask Esca to stay, but even more than Marcus wants Esca to remain by his side, he wants Esca to live. “Go,” he says. “Take the eagle.” And when Esca refuses and tells Marcus to give him his freedom, Marcus returns the dagger Esca once threw at his feet. It was never his to keep, he knows. He should have given it back sooner, but no matter. Esca has it back now. It occurs to Marcus that he could make one last request: that he could ask Esca to grant him his freedom too. Better to die now than to wait for sickness or the Seal people to come and claim him. Better by Esca’s hand, one last touch to take with him. A coward’s death, perhaps, but the best he could wish for. In his last moments, Esca means more to him than his honor ever could.

Esca reaches out his hand, and Marcus wonders if Esca knows. Perhaps Esca will save him the shame of having to ask. He’s so kind. But then Esca’s hand is clasping his head, bringing Marcus’s face so close to his own. Esca gives his word to return, and Marcus knows how much Esca’s word is worth. Once Esca is gone from sight, Marcus reaches for the sturdiest stick he can find and begins to carve a standard for the eagle. He can be strong just a little longer.


End file.
